Reviews
David Nice
There was a good reason why Milton never added a Moderato, a “middle way”, to his masterly poems on mirth in bright day (L’Allegro) and more reflective pleasures by night (Il Penseroso), and a bad one why Handel allowed Charles Jennens to tack on his own ode to reason; neither poetry nor music should have much to do with pure intellect.Yet the joys and solitudes of the first two parts are so mesmerisingly handled, and here well-nigh perfect in performance, that we can forgive a trimmed appendix with a sable final chorus.Following his takeover from the self-dishonoured Gardiner in a Read more ...
Mert Dilek
Few would have imagined that Kenneth Branagh’s return to the West End would see him garbed in fur-lined, prehistoric clothes. But this is how he takes on the gargantuan role of King Lear, in a compact, fast-paced production of Shakespeare’s great tragedy featuring a cast of RADA graduates and directed by himself.Branagh not only distils the play to an intermissionless two hours, but also sets it in a neolithic period of sticks, stones, and spears, where Lear’s tale of psychic and political dispossession gains a timeless aura. Jon Bausor’s set is surrounded by a Stonehenge-like series of Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
For the first half of this spellbinding recital, Maxim Vengerov chose three works framed by one of Romantic music’s most infamous and turbulent stories.In 1853 the violinist Joseph Joachim became close friends with Robert and Clara Schumann – and as a result introduced them to the then unknown 20-year-old Johannes Brahms. The precise dynamics of what precisely happened then has been subject to much speculation. Yet Vengerov’s repertoire bore vivid testament to the fact that it proved as stirring a time creatively as it did personally for all three composers.He opened with Clara Schumann’s Read more ...
Mark Kidel
There is a great deal of sense in transposing electronic music to a symphony orchestra. However beautifully crafted, imaginatively constructed, and creatively programmed, the sounds that come out of synthesisers and other digital tools lack the knife-edge fallibility of music that is produced with the hand or the human breath. Brian Eno’s concert with the Baltic Sea Philharmonic provides compelling evidence that his compositions reveal more of their essence when taken on a trip into the world of strings, brass and other wind instruments, and the chance-prone reality of human moods and Read more ...
Lia Rockey
Over 10 years in the making, The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews reflects its namesake in more ways than one.To those familiar, it is paean and tribute to one of the most famous literary hangouts in the world; to those unfamiliar it, is an introduction and invitation to this hallowed space: an English-speaking bookshop found in the heart of Paris which has, in its current location since 1951, acted as a meeting-place for a range of writers and artists (both major and minor).The book itself is a collection of conversations between these figures and literary director Adam Biles, who Read more ...
Robert Beale
The showman was back – and, bless him, he can still sell every seat in a big hall even if the programme offers close on an hour and a half of unalloyed Bach.Lang Lang’s gifts are phenomenal: he doesn’t just play music brilliantly, every now and then he plays with it, putting his own twist of fun or pathos or bravura where few would venture to try. It can be utterly mesmerising; it can be quirky, if not exasperating. And so he did with the aria and 30 variations for keyboard known to us as the Goldbergs.He preceded it with Schumann’s Arabeske, Op. 18, as if needing to warm the atmosphere a Read more ...
Gary Naylor
The day after I saw the show, as went about the mundanities of domestic life, I wondered how long it would take to come across a reference to 1984. My best bet was listening to an LBC phone-in concerning next week’s conference at Bletchley Park on Artificial Intelligence, but the advertising break intervened, so I switched to Times Radio. Sure enough, at 12.11pm in a report on an apology issued by the Cabinet Office to journalist, Julia Hartley-Brewer, Big Brother Watch was mentioned as the organisation that animated the complaint. It was not felt necessary to explain much about its purpose Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
Imagine a world in which speech has a daily legal limit. Not a limit on what you say, but how many words it takes to say it. Now imagine how such a scenario might work as dance.Adaptations are so common on the theatre stage that the change of state often barely registers: films into plays, novels into ballets, novels into plays… The Limit is different. It takes a West End play, adds live music and choreography, replaces the two leading actors with dancers, and then has those two dancers speak the playscript.The title of the original play, by Sam Steiner, was memorable if unwieldy. Lemons Read more ...
Gary Naylor
A dystopian present. Sirens ring out across the city. Firefighters rush to the wrong locations. A man insists on entry to a big house. He’s not selling anything, so he can’t be an arsonist can he? His friend turns up and she’s pretty upfront about her intentions – and the barrels of petrol in the attic rather give the game away. But the wealthy homeowner, so ruthless at work, is so polite at home, the coming conflagration all but accepted as a matter of… manners, social convention, apathy?Max Frisch’s 1950s play started as a radio production that has moved to theatres around the world, Read more ...
Sarah Kent
If Madeleine Gavin’s Beyond Utopia doesn’t make you cry, you’re a hard nut to crack. The film records the fortunes of defectors fleeing North Korea, a hell hole that is more like a prison camp than a country.The phone rings with news that a family of five – an 80-year-old grandmother, her daughter, son-in-law and their two small girls – have crossed the Yalu River and are now trapped in China. They are desperate; if caught, they’ll be returned to North Korea to be tortured and either killed or sent to a concentration camp.The caller is part of the “underground railroad” network that helps Read more ...
David Nice
It’s a given that no finer Rachmaninov interpreter exists than Nikolai Lugansky – a few others may see the works differently, not better – and that Vasily Petrenko has an uncanny affinity with both the swagger and the introspection of Elgar. But just how clearly and deeply both made their understanding felt seemed like an harmonious miracle in the most famous of all Second Piano Concertos and a parallel journey of revitalisation from Petrenko in Elgar’s world-embracing First Symphony.So the theme of this season, “Icons Rediscovered”, was for once supremely apt. Petrenko, after an engaging Read more ...
Veronica Lee
It takes some chutzpah to do a substantial section of a comedy show in 2023 (and touring until mid-2024) that deals with your pandemic woes, but that’s Michael McIntyre for you – he has never been short of confidence. To be fair, it’s the closing section of a solidly constructed performance of his everyman comedy, but runs the risk of being stale for those seeing him at the end of the tour.Macnificent is his first touring show in five years, during which his career as host of various shiny-floor shows – clips of which we see in a pre-show reel – has gone from strength to strength. His latest Read more ...